First Base

Google just unveiled it's biggest search product in recent memory, except this time the search giant is looking to take over the world of virtual objects. On Wednesday, Nov. 1, Google launched Poly (as in polygon, get it?), a massive database of searchable 3D objects that aug ...more

There aren't many people who will believe that a prosthetic zipper face or gunshot wound to the eye (disgusting as they are) are real, but greyscale from Game of Thrones? That'll really unsettle people for awhile because it totally looks like an actual, honest-to-God infection ...more

With a pair of new APIs and low-latency media servers, Twilio's Programmable Video platform could soon help ARKit and ARCore app developers build shared AR experiences between multiple users. By synchronizing AR content with audio and video communications in real time, Twilio ...more

When it comes to streaming your favorite movies and TV shows, there aren't many media players that are better than Kodi. With its fast performance and easy-to-use interface, it is definitely one of the best options. But what really sets it apart is its ability to add functiona ...more

Let's face It ... Pennywise is going to be the Halloween costume to beat this year. It's terrifying, simple enough to pull off, and with the original movie's gargantuan box office gross and the hit status of the sequel, released in September, everyone and their pet dog will ge ...more

The promise of augmented reality when it comes to gaming is the conversion of the player's real-world environment into a virtual playground. Army of Robots, available for $1.99 in the App Store for ARKit-compatible devices, gives us a tangible example on how the promise could ...more

Every other year, Apple comes out with "S" model iPhones that enhance and speed up their main series models from the previous year. This year, however, because of the highly-anticipated 10th anniversary iPhone, aka the iPhone X, Apple has dropped the "S" and moved straight to ...more

The standing desk movement has gained momentum over the past few years as research has pointed to the detrimental health effects of sitting at a desk all day. For those who are ready to take the plunge into this new paradigm, standing desk vendor Varidesk has a mobile augment ...more

Now that we have installed the toolkit, set up our prefabs, and prepared Unity for export to HoloLens, we can proceed with the fun stuff involved in building a dynamic user interface. In this section, we will build the system manager. On the most basic level, the system manag ...more

A Jedi does not seek adventure or excitement, but Star Wars fans can seek Jedi with the Find the Force augmented reality scavenger hunt promoting the launch of merchandise for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Between Sept. 1 and 3, participants are tasked with finding Find the Force ...more

Another day brings another Apple ARKit demo, this time for a first-person role playing game that inserts villagers, vendors, and villains into real world locations. Finnish developer Lauri Rustanius shared a series of videos via Twitter for a game called Genereal World that i ...more

CyberTimez and the Wounded Warrior Program, using the Vuzix M300 monocular smartglasses, are teaming up to help supply veterans with little to no sight. The overarching goal here is helping these injured service members to find a new level of independence in a sight driven wor ...more

One interesting feature hiding inside Apple's stock Camera app is a level that helps you take photos of documents and nicely plated food from a top-down perspective. Unfortunately, you'd never know it was there since it's not enabled by default and there is no obvious setting ...more

Crossfades are a great way to get from one scene to another. They bridge the gap between two video clips in a fresh, fun way. But can you even use this transition in a smartphone editor? You bet you can, and it's extremely easy. Adobe Premiere Clip, available for Android or i ...more

Fades are a classic video transition technique, either at the beginning or end of a scene. They can dramatically begin a film as the picture fades in from black, or they can slowly end the story as the screen moves into darkness. They can also be used within a movie as dramati ...more

BMW seeks to hire 2,000 engineers for its driverless program ahead of the launch of its iNext Level 3 model in 2021, a source close to the company told Driverless. According to the source, BMW hopes to boost the number of its driverless-related workforce, most of which will b ...more

The fourth and final beta version of Android O just made its debut, and the biggest change is what appears to be a new code name. When you access Android 8.0's version number Easter egg, you'll be greeted by ... a cartoon octopus. Octopus starts with the letter "O," and Googl ...more

Numerous examples exist of doctors and surgeons using HoloLens to plan surgeries. The device has even been used to view reference images during a procedure and stream it to a remote audience. Until recently, it has not been used to augment the surgeon's view of the patient dur ...more

Lazy makeup enthusiasts, this new service is what you've been waiting for! Makeup giant Estee Lauder's latest project incorporates augmented reality to help customers test out their lipsticks without even getting out of bed. The company collaborated with Modiface — a group th ...more

In the SoundCloud app, when you find an awesome song, you can build off of it by creating one killer music station that will give you like-minded songs you might not have ever discovered otherwise. And finding cool new songs and artists isn't the only reason to create a SoundC ...more

Hutch Interiors, Inc., makers of an eponymous augmented reality home design app for iOS and Android, has closed a series A round of funding, led by online real estate company Zillow Group, totaling $10 million. Hutch shares the approach of similar augmented reality apps from ...more

Mobile wallet Curve just released a new feature that lets you correct past mistakes. Sounds incredible, right? Unfortunately, the mistakes you can erase aren't things like forgetting to do an assignment in school, screwing up a job interview, or, well, your ex. However, you ca ...more

Many wonder how driverless cars will ever be able to navigate through any driving condition imaginable — but the point is self-taught machines, in theory, have the innate ability to adapt to chaotic and extreme driving conditions in ways far superior to what humans are capable ...more

All the Driverless news you need to know from the past 24 hours, bundled together in a tightly written package, about Uber, London delivery services, capital investments, and kangaroos. Ousted Uber Founder & CEO Says He Didn't Know About Stolen Documents In the latest court ...more

A patent from Universal was filed today looking to improve the visual experience at Universal Studios Parks. Universal Studios is famous for attractions based around major pop culture hallmarks like Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, and Despicable Me. It was originally only 'Unive ...more

I can't stand trying to use my phone in direct sunlight. It drives me crazy — I just want to get through a game of Sonic, but I can't see where I'm going. No one has it harder than I do. But my troubles might soon be over, as researchers are developing anti-glare films for sma ...more

Millions of dollars continue to pour into the Chinese driverless market. Now, according to research firm CB Insights, $929 million have been invested in the first quarter of this year. The Chinese markets are very intent on getting driverless vehicles on their roads. From bus ...more

Thanks to a $100 million deal, you could be seeing more original shows on your Snapchat soon. Already, Snap has been producing super short shows in order to compete with social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook who have also been attempting to create their own content. ...more

This week, augmented reality spawns in the world of online role-playing games with a soft launch down under from an indie game developer. Meanwhile, in Asia, another startup wins a coveted award for its AR headset. Finally, an established player in the mobile AR touches up its ...more

Is technology making us disconnected? Findings from a study conducted by YouGov hint that — for millennials — the answer is yes. The research found that nearly one in five US teens prefers to video chat their friends rather than spend time with them face-to-face. YouGov's stu ...more

New "radar road signature" technology from Bosch will be used to create maps for high-accuracy self driving. The new map is the first to use radar signals for a localization layer. Bosch's radar sensors have a detection range of up to 250 meters, compared to a maximum video r ...more

Demand for Tesla's driverless features as well as its ultra-long battery ranges and a reputation for offering the best-in-class electric car driving experience helped Tesla see a 32% surge in its value as a brand, topping out at $5.9 billion in the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable ...more

Waymo's transfer of its driverless car know-how to commercial trucks will likely pose few challenges for the self-driving unit of Alphabet, which owns Google. That's because the sensor, deep machine learning, mapping, and other technologies underpinning its driverless cars ar ...more

Meta CEO and founder — and Next Reality 50 member —Meron Gribetz unveiled a new operating environment for augmented reality called Meta Workspace for the audience at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Santa Clara, California, today. Gribetz demonstrated several features of the ...more

Today in Santa Clara, California, at the Augmented World Expo, Scope AR revealed a major new update that will add markerless tracking for their remote assistance application, Remote AR, on standard devices. This update, powered by real-time image tracking solution Wikitude, p ...more

Beijing- and Seattle-based DataMesh have announced the release of a new enterprise geared mixed reality middleware — MeshExpert. This solution for collaborative interaction with dynamic data is made up of two primary components: MeshExpert Live!, a 4K mixed reality capture sys ...more

From Farmville to selling a company to Google, Amitt Mahajan has been through the startup ringer. Now, as managing partner with Presence Capital, he's funding the future of augmented and mixed reality. With interest in 3D graphics, Mahajan started his career working on game e ...more

At Vision Summit 2017, UK-based Rewind, one of the recent additions to the Microsoft HoloLens Agency Readiness Partner Program, showed off a HoloLens application called "Flight Deck" that genuinely blew me away. The idea of watching a live-action sports experience on a coffee ...more

Today at Microsoft Build 2017 in Seattle, Washington, ScopeAR announced that their mixed reality smart instruction development platform, Worklink, will now work with the Microsoft HoloLens in addition to the mobile devices that are currently supported. The heart of this platf ...more

Snapchat is attempting to take over the world via augmented reality technology. Well, it's more of a virtual makeover than a takeover, but still ... The patent application, which was filed by the company in 2015 and published on May 4, 2017, indicates that Snap, Inc. plans to ...more

Beware: After a new caucus — the Congressional Caucus on Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality Technologies for the 115th Congress — formed in the US House of Representatives, the government has decided to go after all mixed reality head-mounted displays. The HoloLens, Magic L ...more

Those of us with modern smartphones know that 4G LTE networks have provided us with a phenomenal experience. One light years beyond what we had access to before. For some time, AT&T has been teasing its dive into the next iteration of network speeds, agonizingly doing so witho ...more

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has been purchasing spyware from the Milan-based Hacking Team and its US subsidiary Cicom USA since 2012. Public records reveal invoices between Cicom USA and the DEA that have ranged between $22,000 to $575,000 from 2012 to 2015. Hacking Tea ...more

Just like in the Spy Kids 3D movie, US soldiers may soon upgrade their mission planning from 2D to 3D. Welcome to the wonderful world of augmented reality, US Army. Natick, Massachusetts is home to the Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center (NSRDEC), who ...more

Welcome to the maiden voyage of our new Market Reality column. Each Friday, NextReality will give you a roundup of news briefs from the financial end of the augmented and mixed reality industry. We'll cover funding news, market analysis, and more. Boeing Forms Technology Inve ...more

4DViews, the volumetric capture company that films actors and performers in augmented and virtual reality for things like movies, TV series, and applications, has just released the app 4DViews: Raise Virtual to Reality, to demonstrate its technology for smartphones. The mobil ...more

Lyft is experimenting with commuter ride sharing by debuting a new "Shuttle" option, which offers pickups and drop-offs along select routes, much like a metro bus would do. The company is trying out the new option in San Francisco and Chicago, but if all goes well, we might al ...more

Amazon has been toying with the idea of opening physical retail stores for some time now, even opening old-fashioned bookstores in select locations and teasing cashier-less convenience stores. But the online retailer has some new ideas in the works, including implementing virt ...more

Vodafone India has merged with telecom company Idea Cellular to become India's largest mobile player this week. On Monday, March 20, Vodafone Group PLC announced that they would combine their Indian branch of business with the local competition to create India's biggest wirel ...more

In February, the popular Facebook-owned WhatsApp Messenger service jumped on the "stories" bandwagon and replaced their in-app, text-based "About Me" status (you know, those lovely little messages where you can say "Sleeping" or "Not Sleeping" under the tiny nub of your profil ...more

The company that pioneered music scanning for mobile devices is moving into the augmented reality advertising arena. Included in an update of their iOS and Android apps last week, Shazam can now scan special codes to immerse users in 3D animations, 360-degree videos, mini-game ...more

For some, drinking raw milk is a way to get back to nature, improve family nutrition, and hedge against asthma and allergies. However, according to public health authorities, drinking raw or unpasteurized milk is a big mistake—even fatal. So what's the story? Animal milk prod ...more

In a press event this past week at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, Unity Labs, the experimental and forward thinking arm of Unity, announced an upcoming toolset for developers in the augmented, mixed, and virtual reality space called the XR Foundat ...more

When it comes to ad blocking on Android, there's no better app than AdAway. The popular root mod filters out ads at the hosts file level, so no extra processing power is used, and your phone is literally incapable of loading most ads. But one thing AdAway doesn't do is get ri ...more

This morning, in an early morning session at GDC 2017, Brandon Bray, a senior program manager lead at Microsoft, revealed a mixed reality headset made in collaboration with Acer—a different headset than the one we saw from Acer at CES 2017 earlier this year. Also at the event, ...more

If you have stuck volume buttons, it can be a real pain to adjust sound levels since your only other option is to use the volume menu in Settings. But even if your volume rocker is working fine, it's still a little weird to have to click a mechanical button to control one of t ...more

Crayon, a free 3D drawing application by the mysteriously named arkalian, showed up in the Windows Store recently, so I gave it a try like I do all new apps for Windows Holographic. Truthfully, I loaded it up not expecting much, but wow, was I wrong. It's a simple idea, but it ...more

HoloLens developer Michael Peters of In-Vizible has released quite a few videos since receiving his HoloLens last year. Many of his experiments are odd and funny, but some include serious potential approaches to data visualization. In the videos embedded below, you'll specific ...more

If you've played the game Portal by Valve before, you've most likely popped one portal onto the ceiling and another directly below it on the floor, dropped your Companion Cube in, and then watched it fall forever. Well, now it has been done in real life, in an actual hallway, ...more

While most people have only begun hearing the term augmented reality in the last year or so, AR has been around in some form since the early '90s. It all started with heads-up displays (HUDs) for pilots to see instant information in their visors, but has graduated to a far mor ...more